I bought 2018 Before Ming Lion Peak – I still have small quantity of 2017 Before Ming. I mostly want to share these images that there is a noticeable price difference between First Pick and Before Ming – even when they are the same year, same region, same tea harvester, same brand…etc.

Actual no… I thought about trying the Plum actually, but didn’t. I will give it a try next time. Thanks.

I think it depends how much you like Dragon Well. I am told there is a customer who always come and buy ~3 packages of the First Pick Lion Peak each year. That is 750 gram of First Pick. They also said that he only buys Dragon Well, so presumably mostly only drinks Dragon Well

By the way, I did a back of the envelope calculation last night. Getting back to the very origin of this conversation, even high end First Pick Dragon Well from Lion Peak (despite seemingly expensive) is probably not much more expensive than drinking bubble tea. Cup-for-cup - that is.

Bubble Tea: $4-6 a cup of ~500mL.
First Pick Lion Peak Dragon Well tea: $660 for 250 gram. 2 gram of tea can brew out about 400-500 mL tea. So effectively, 500 mL of tea from First Pick Dragon Well is about $6

Will you still keep drinking the 2017 version? Me too I still have them

Maybe just a little, but I don’t have much 2017 left anyway, maybe 15 gram.
For the general case, I would recommend people go straight to the 2018 Dragon Well tea if they have it, and don’t worry about finishing the 2017 tea.

As for the dish question, I cannot be sure, but it is unlikely that high grade tea was used. There is actually no strong reason to use a high grade tea because much of the flavor will be overwhelmed by other food flavors. If I have to guess, it won’t be any Dragonwell tea before the Ming season, and it probably won’t be from West Lake neither. Vast majority of Dragon Well tea leaves are not from West Lake. West Lake produces ~10% of all Dragon Well tea.

Of course, drinking Bubble tea at a store is a different experience than preparing Dragon Well at home. One is like eating out at a restaurant and the other is like cooking at home. I don’t mean a First Pick Dragon Well tea from a tea house will be $6 a cup.

What I wanted to point out is that drinking high grade tea from home is not as elusive or unattainable as many would think. It is just that the payment often comes out as one large lump sum, in this case ~$600-800 for 250 gram of First Pick Dragon Well tea from the Lion Peak region. Yet, a person who orders 2 cups of bubble tea per week, he/she will spend ~$500 in a year. He/she may not notice it because the payment is spread out.

For that matter… a Before Ming (before rain period) Lion Peak Dragon Well tea is about the same price as paying $1.25 for a can of coke from a vending machine.

I recently had the opportunity to sample “real” Pu Erh for the first time. What I have at home is way too strong and I hardly ever drink it. This was smooth and beautiful. The picture shows the second brewing. I wish I had taken a picture of the gorgeous red color of the first brew. I got the feeling the grade might be fudged a little bit, though.

Ripe (熟普洱) Pu Erh tea is more or less a recent invention. The traditional Pu Erh tea is the same as raw Pu Erh tea. When the raw Pu Erh tea is naturally aged (老生普洱), then it gradually changes its flavor. Here is a photo of the change of tea leaves through years:

The tea liquid from also changes its color depending on the aging process:

Ripe Pu Erh tea is a process which tried to speed up this aging progress in a short duration. However, an aged raw Pu Erh tea has a deeper complexity.